HENDERSON, Nev. — Bob “The Hammer” Fleming fiddles with a gray remote control that resembles a 9-volt battery in his thick left hand, with which he conducted so much hockey business.
His Hammer’s Grill & Bar is a cool, dark oasis from the bright high-noon desert sun. Walls display photos of Bears legends Walter Payton and Dick Butkus, a Bobby Hull inscription, John Belushi barking, “To-ga! To-ga!”
We retreat to the Penalty Box, in the back, where a poster trumpets Fleming’s status as one of the 25 most-revered Peoria Rivermen.
This little gadget, however, confounds the 61-year-old Hammer, who’s 6-1 and self-deprecating about his 303 pounds, 70 more than his playing weight.
A smart TV in the Box can access YouTube, so we aim to view his jousts with Stu Grimson, ‘‘The Grim Reaper,’’ in a preseason game inside rabid Chicago Stadium on Sept. 29, 1991. It was Fleming’s final shot at the NHL as a member of the Sabres.
He enters his email and password. A mishit. It reverts back to start. He taps. Back to start. He rings wife Julie, whom he met and married in Peoria.
She finds a recent password. He’s patient. He taps. Back to start. ‘‘Ahh,’’ he says. “We tried.” Less than two years ago, Fleming admits, he would not have attempted this futile exercise.
Having undergone electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in Calgary, though, has mitigated the damage of countless fights. The Flemings recommend former athletes, anyone who suffers from mental issues, to investigate it.
Julie Fleming got her husband back.
“One thousand percent,” she says. “Saw it with my own eyes.”
The Hammer returned from intermittent sessions, over two months, clearheaded, prepared to run his business. Two days after we talked, he went to Mexico to close a big mescal deal.
“I didn’t want to make decisions,” he says. “At night, I had bad anxiety. I was hoping I wasn’t going down that road, drinking out of a vodka bottle and ready to commit suicide.
“But I’m good.”
FEEL THIS
Fleming became ‘‘The Hammer’’ in 1980, at 19, in Medicine Hat of the Western Hockey League. Bruce Gordon, a 17-year-old wing from Saskatoon, ran roughshod in training camp.
“Gooney Gordon,” Fleming says. “He fought five guys that first day and a half. He told me, ‘You’re next.’ I just pounded him. I grabbed him with my right hand, and just, my left . . . I probably hit him 10 times before he went down.
“The last five, probably, were unnecessary.”
Fleming was raised with an oily spoon. Don Fleming was a successful oil rigger, and he raised his son and two daughters on a Calgary ranch.
When Queen Elizabeth II passed through, youngest son Prince Edward sought an excursion. A tough captain of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Fleming and the prince took the compound’s top horses into the Rockies.
“We reach a glacier, a helicopter lands and a chef serves us prime rib and Yorkshire pudding,” Fleming says. “I could probably write a book.”
Medicine Hat fans first chanted, “Ham-Mer! Ham-Mer!” which would play well in Peoria. The lefty with the dominant left eye had discovered his gift.
“I found out at a young age that I could hit pretty much where I wanted on their face, before they could react. I was accurate and pretty heavy-handed.”
He removes a cap. “Feel this!” A mutual friend and I tap an iron-hard forehead.
“A Fleming trait, I guess. I could head-butt guys, too!”
YOU FIGHTIN’ GRIMMER?
The Hammer skated onto the Chicago Stadium ice in awe. He’d participated in two preseason games for the Sabres.
“But I’d never seen anything quite like that,” he says. “Eighteen thousand screaming people in Chicago. [Buffalo wing] Rick Vaive said, ‘Hammer, this is nothing. Wait till the playoffs!’ I said, I hope I’m here for that.”
Fleming, 30, had been retired for two years, but he was in solid shape. He’d just won a Toughman competition on an Indian reservation outside Calgary when Buffalo coach Rick Dudley rang him.
“Knocked four guys out, all in one day. Exhausting,” Fleming told Dudley, who had coached him in Flint of the International Hockey League. “Took $1,800 and their cheesy belt.”
Dudley, laughing, booked him a flight.
Fleming chokes up. Cancer was destroying his father. A doctor wanted to back off thyroid radiation, as Don Fleming glowed from its effects. Give me the rest of the treatments, Don demanded. “Kill this or kill me.”
The doctor had never met anyone as tough as Don Fleming.
Sabres trainer Jim “Pizza” Pizzutelli, a former Vietnam medic who had famously saved Clint Malarchuk’s life on the ice 2½ years earlier, handed Fleming a No. 42 Buffalo jersey.
Behind the helmet, above the number, Pizza had etched a tiny “H.T.”
‘‘Hammer Time,’’ Pizza told a puzzled Fleming. Rapper MC Hammer’s song featuring those words had exploded 17 months earlier.
“You fightin’ Grimmer tonight?” Pizza said.
“Yeah, we’ll see what happens.”
SO CLOSE
Grimson’s 2,113 penalty minutes rank him 44th on the NHL career chart. By Sept. 29, 1991, he had become a known quantity, with class. He was 26, having played a full season with Chicago.
“I’m an older guy coming out of retirement, just trying to win a spot in Buffalo,” Fleming says. “The announcer says I’m going to get on the team or get a trip to the Chicago hospital. They thought I’d had one too many cups of coffee.”
Fleming watches YouTube, on our friend’s horizontal cell phone, in the Box. Sabres vs. Blackhawks. On the periphery of a faceoff, Fleming brushes up against Grimson.
Ding, Round One.
“We know what’s going on,” Fleming says. “He was a very ethical tough guy. No cheap shots. I give him a bit of a check.”
Gloves drop. Fleming gets in four jabs with that power left. He slips.
“Stumble a little bit,” he says. “I don’t usually stumble. Probably nervous.”
Grimson lands a flurry. They drop to the ice. Fleming’s left ear would swell from a hard Reaper hook. The Hammer can’t believe he slipped.
His money shot was a left uppercut, but he couldn’t reach the 6-6 Reaper.
Grimson skates a tight circle, which Fleming mirrors. Another faceoff.
Ding, Round Two.
Fleming pokes a straight left arm, taunting Grimson. The Reaper stays poised, skating backward elegantly. Fleming jabs with his right. Grimson retaliates. Fleming hugs Grimson in a back-breaker. They fall to the ice.
Grimson gets free, skates away.
“I was kinda crazy at that point,” Fleming says. “I tried to climb the glass to get into [his] penalty box. He circled an ear, like I was crazy, and shook his head. I said, ‘Let’s go again!’ I was yelling stuff and got booted out.
“They pelted me with beer. I said, ‘Hey, that’s big-league beer!’ Off I went to the dressing room.”
He scores the second bout for Grimson, the first a draw.
“Stu was one of the game’s best enforcers. I’d like to meet him, shake his hand. He became a lawyer and championed stuff for concussions.”
Ensuing days are hazy. Fleming says Dudley told him he’d play for the Sabres until Christmas. Bob called his father, who was elated. Don Fleming died within a month.
John Muckler, Buffalo’s director of hockey operations, demoted Fleming, sacked Dudley and took over as coach. Muckler died in January 2021. Dudley is a senior advisor for the Florida Panthers.
The Hammer never played a regular-season game in the NHL.
CUTTING EDGE
He started Hammer’s Bar and Restaurant, in Bartonville, in 1994, selling it to a former Rivermen teammate when he moved here, where sister Marilyn resides. Hammer started this iteration in 2007.
The enforcer who’d broken maybe 48 full beer bottles over that iron coconut, as either a bar gag or to warn adversaries, started worrying. Tragic demises of NFL players Junior Seau, Mike Webster and Dave Duerson, and NHL enforcers Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, Wade Belak and others, all related to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), troubled him.
Julie Fleming believes her husband had CTE.
“I had to physically get him out of bed, to go for a walk,” she says. “He became lucid and lethargic, just not Bob. Very depressed. I just knew something had to be done, and I knew it was from knocks to the head.”
The Hammer says he had anxiety, and he didn’t want to live that way.
“This [expletive] gets into your head. Mike Webster was plucking his teeth with pliers and putting them back in with Krazy Glue. There are Steelers who feel guilty that they didn’t do more for him.”
The Flemings are forever grateful that Bob’s sister, Dr. Shannon Zedachuk, introduced him to Dr. Kelly Fredell, a psychologist and mental-health expert in Okotoks, near Calgary.
Medication, prescribed by another doctor, had zapped the Hammer. “Couldn’t take them anymore. Didn’t want to be sedated like an old bull.”
In early 2021, Zedachuk arranged first-class accommodations for Bob, who sometimes underwent two procedures a day.
“I had the halo on me,” Fleming says of a contraption that connects electrodes to his iron skull. “They fixed me without giving me Prozac and all that crappy medicine. It’s cutting-edge electrical-shock stimulation. They map your brain.”
For example, he told Fredell he’d had trouble sleeping. She recommended working on his sleep center. Fleming was dubious when she said, ‘‘You’ll see the ocean; you’ll feel like you’re in a boat.’’
Soon, he was grabbing chair arms, feeling as if the room were rocking back and forth, like a yacht. Today, he sleeps like a puppy.
Fredell warned the Hammer.
“She said, ‘You might have one more concussion in you, or 10,’ ” Fleming says. “You might bump into that [expletive] door and not be cognizant again. Don’t [expletive] with that. That’s me [translating] her words.”
The Mayo and Cleveland clinics also treat depression, mania and other symptoms with mild electrical-current therapy.
“People need to know about this procedure,” Julie Fleming says. “I know for a fact it works. I’ve seen the difference. It’s a breakthrough.”
Meantime, the Hammer knows fighting should remain in the game.
“Guys won’t do those cheap shots if they have to answer to a Grimson or [Rangers wing Ryan] Reaves, or a Bob Fleming, for that matter.”
